updated 08:10 pm EST, Thu March 1, 2012

NetApplications sees Apple grow widely in February

Apple saw an unusually widescale, comprehensive growth in its share of the web in February, NetApplications showed on Thursday. On the desktop, it bounced back to near an all-time high at 6.9 percent, a level seen in October. Its mobile share followed suit, going up almost exactly seven points to 60.6 percent.

Most of the share gain on the desktop came at Linux's expense, as whatever gains it had since September were lost. Windows also dropped. Mobile saw Apple mostly benefiting from those switching to modern smartphones: basic feature phones' Java ME dropped five points, while Symbian had its share cut in half in just one month. Android did gain share, but at one percent was moving more slowly than iOS.

Browsers in mobile followed their operating systems as Safari jumped while those outside of Android dropped. Desktop use was more complex, the web tracking found. Safari rode the surge in Macs to 5.2 percent, while Chrome saw its first consecutive decline. Internet Explorer lost a slight amount of its own ground.

The reasons for the sudden Apple shift hadn't been deduced. The company is currently in between Mac hardware updates and is likely to see iOS shipments cool off slightly in the post-holiday rush. It's unlikely to depend heavily on seasonal habits; February sees many still at work, where they're more likely to use Windows.

Flash or no Flash

Safari is hands-down the best mobile browser out there. Has been since mobile Safari arrived with the original iPhone back in 2007. There is a reason Google never branded the 'Browser' in Android 'Chrome' - that's because they knew it was very ordinary at best and did not want to tarnish the reputation of the Chrome branding.

Accuracy

Weird figures

The general trends are interesting and probably accurate, but I don't trust their numbers at all--their desktop numbers aren't even close to both my experience and what other stats firms report, so I can't really trust the rest of their numbers, either.

In the referenced graph of desktop share they show IE with 53%, FF with 21%, Chrome with 19%, and Safari with about 5%. Based on every other personal and private survey I've seen that IE number is ridiculously high.

In contrast, W3Schools' January numbers have IE at less than half that--20%, FF at 37%, Chrome at 35%, and Safari at 4%. Not even remotely close. The Wikipedia page showing several other stat companies all have NetApplications' numbers being the outlier by a wide margin, too.

And my personal experience is WAY closer to what W3Schools reports; my own sites usually have IE, Chrome, and FF in a very rough 3-way tie, with IE usually behind. The numbers are in the same ballpark on things as far apart as a geek-hobby-centric website and a recipe site, the latter of which you'd expect grannies still running IE6 to be a significant demographic on.

Outlier: On a restaurant site in a college town, the #1 browser is Mobile Safari--lotta iPhones in town.

The only thing I can think of that could make NetApplications' statistics make any kind of sense would be if they're overcounting China; due to all the pirated XP boxes in mainland China, MS is tracking them at 23% still on IE6, and there's probably a pretty high percentage of IE7-9 users, too.

Re: Weird figures

In contrast, W3Schools' January numbers have IE at less than half that--20%, FF at 37%, Chrome at 35%, and Safari at 4%. Not even remotely close. The Wikipedia page showing several other stat companies all have NetApplications' numbers being the outlier by a wide margin, too.

So you don't trust NetApplications, which measures a large number of visitors to a large and diverse number of web sites, but you think W3Schools browser count, which is one web site, and considering those who would go there, covers a small segment of the browsing community, is more correct?

And NetApplications strives to count unique visitors, not just page hits.